The question presents itself whether Newcastle would have been wise to march to the South, leaving such a fortress as Hull behind him, a fortress very strongly garrisoned and containing many of Fairfax’s best officers. It is true that the younger Hotham had professed some sympathy with the Royalists, but neither he nor his father had shown any definite symptoms of deserting the Parliament. On the other hand, it might be argued that it would have been worth while to lose Yorkshire and the northern counties, if by co-operation Newcastle’s army and the King’s could have completely conquered the southern counties, subdued London, and broken the power of the Parliament.
In the early autumn of 1643, King Charles made Newcastle a Marquess. This advance in the peerage was of course an acknowledgment of his military services, and had nothing whatever to do with any purchase of the title by such a gross thing as filthy lucre: at the same time it is difficult to forget that the new Marquess had probably spent more in hard cash out of his own pocket for the King in raising his army than would have been necessary to buy the title in the ordinary heraldic market.
The gentlemen of Yorkshire were very uneasy at the presence of the recently-mentioned strong garrison in the south-east corner of their county, at Hull, and they besought Newcastle to lay siege to it and crush it, once for all, promising to raise 10,000 men to help him if he would make the attempt, a promise which was never fulfilled. Newcastle consented to their request, marched to Hull and besieged it.
The defence of Hull under Lord Fairfax was a very different thing from what it would have been if the wavering, half-Royalist Sir John Hotham had still been in command. But Hotham had lately been arrested and taken to the Tower. Newcastle threw up a good many batteries and fired red-hot shot into the town. Fairfax replied to Newcastle’s fire with water, by cutting dykes on the Hull and Humber, thus flooding the invaders, their batteries, their guns, their red-hot shot, and their camps.
And now, again, the question of marching to the assistance of the royal army in the South of England was urged upon Newcastle. According to Clarendon, while he was besieging Hull—and he besieged it for six weeks—the King ordered him,[76] if he thought he could not take it quickly, to leave sufficient troops to invest it, and to march with the remainder of his army through Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex towards London, which Charles would then approach from the opposite side.
[76] Clarendon, Hist., vol. II, part I. book vii.
Charles also told the Queen to press Newcastle on this point—evidently he had not much confidence in the power of his own commands! She wrote to Newcastle: “He” (the King) “had written me to send you word to go into Suffolk, Norfolk or Huntingdonshire. I answered him that you were a better judge than he of that, and that I should not do it. The truth is that they envy your army.” [77]
[77] Letters of Henrietta Maria, Mrs. Everett Green, p. 225.
Newcastle sent a reply back to the King, telling him that “he had not strength enough to march and to leave Hull securely blocked up,” and that the gentlemen of Yorkshire, “who had the best regiments and were among the best officers, utterly refused to march till Hull were taken”. This shows the state of discipline among the King’s faithful officers at this period.
Besides Clarendon’s account of the King’s attempt to draw Newcastle to the South, we have that of Sir Philip Warwick, who acted as Charles’s envoy in this business:—[78]